MPI-M scientists visited China´s Meteorological Administration

05.04.2018
Science
Climate
Atmosphere

Bjorn Stevens and Cathy Hohenegger visiting the CMA supercomputer and cloud server. The new high-performance supercomputer is among the fastest used for meteorological research worldwide, and is named Pi, and is accompanied by a cloud data server. Both are visualized by the mural, wherein the computer is represented as a deep convective, and pi-shaped, cloud on the left, with numerous shallow convective clouds on the right symbolizing the data system.

Thirteen scientists connected to the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) visited the Chinese Meteorological Administration for scientific exchange in the fields of atmospheric research and climate modeling in late March 2018.

The visit in China consisted of two parts in two different cities. The first part, in Guangzhou in the south of China, was a workshop on the topic of multi-scale modeling of atmospheric processes. All scientists gave scientific presentations on their findings paired with presentations from the Chinese colleagues. The second part, in Beijing, was a training course, where all presented one or more pedagogical lectures pertaining to their individual expertise in climate science. The thirteen participants represented the full breadth of research within the department "The Atmosphere in the Earth System" at MPI-M. For the MPI-M, the main organizer was Dr. Chao Li, a research scientist in the Department "Ocean in the Earth System", who over the years has helped the institute nurture a closer working relationship with different Chinese research institutions.

Prof. Bjorn Stevens, Director at MPI-M: "I was fascinated by the research station that the Chinese are setting up in Longmen, northwest of Guangzhou. This is a fascinating station, because it is tropical, and in the pre-monsoon period of early summer, you can have very strong wind and weather systems develop over it, many with warm rain. In the winter it finds itself in one of the premier stratocumulus regimes, and all of this over a region that has undergone massive development, hosting an urban population of about 40 million."

The scientists got to better understand the expertise and interests of the Chinese colleagues. In addition to the observations, the Chinese colleagues are very interested in clouds and convective processes, their interaction with terrain, and their representation at very high resolution. These interests complement the ones of the MPI-M connected scientists and they will hopefully find support through a new German-Chinese initiative in support of climate change science.